A constitutional amendment would take time, especially as the U.S. Constitution had not been amended since 1804, and by the time of the Civil War some Americans considered it sacrosanct. It would not be until late 1863 that Congress would begin to act on what became the 13th Amendment. But one matter of agreement in Congress by late 1861 was its absolute authority over the District of Columbia, including slavery there, even with the Dred Scott decision. So when Congress convened in December 1861, the Radicals judged the time was ripe for slavery to be abolished in Washington, D.C. Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, introduced a bill to do just that on December 4, 1861. From that date the bill worked its way through the congressional committee process receiving final passage in April 1862.

While Abraham Lincoln in Spring 1862 preferred gradual to immediate emancipation, as he admitted in a letter to Horace Greeley dated March 24, 1862, seeing it as less socially disruptive (which was the same reason he preferred the emigration of ex-slaves), he could hardly veto the Compensated Emancipation Act since during his single term in Congress in the late 1840s, Lincoln had introduced a bill to end slavery in Washington, D.C. Lincoln did not explicitly address those concerns in a message to Congress and the American people on April 16, 1862, announcing his signature of the D.C. emancipation bill, opting instead to criticize the ninety-day time limit placed on compensation claims. His message read:

There was more that both Lincoln and Congress could do to end slavery in the United States, but the Compensated Emancipation Act struck a major blow against the peculiar institution. It signaled both legislative and executive branches were serious about freeing the slaves, and that from then on any disagreements between them about emancipation would not be whether that aim was proper, but about the most efficacious means to achieve it.

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About Donald R. Shaffer

Donald R. Shaffer is the author of _After the Glory: The Struggles of Black Civil War Veterans_ (Kansas, 2004), which won the Peter Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship in 2005. More recently he published (with Elizabeth Regosin), _Voices of Emancipation: Understanding Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction through the U.S. Pension Bureau Files_ (2008). Dr. Shaffer teaches online exclusively (i.e., a virtual professor). He lives in Arizona and can be contacted at donald_shaffer@yahoo.com